The world is every changing and dynamic, but even with all our technologies at our disposal, people still differ. Those differences can be economic, cultural, demographical, global or domestic and it causes a lot of problems for business owners who want to market their products to people across the globe.

The principles of marketing may be very similar, but the marketing research technique that is commonly used to target a market requires national and cultural specific characteristics.

Values, concerns and attitudes need to be considered for target markets using the concept of market segmentation.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Consider Differences In People By Nations

Different cultures within the USA, and across the world, are going to have different buying habits. This presents a problem when you are trying to sell a product across nations.

It’s difficult enough to market across cultures within the USA, but the difficulty intensifies when marketing across nations.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Demographic Characteristics Vary By Nation and Culture

Demographic segments vary across the world. For example, some characteristics for Generation Y in the USA may be similar worldwide, but most will be quite different.

Generation X, young adults in the USA, were deeply influenced by the 9-11 terrorists attacks. Because of global mass media, that event was somewhat experienced by young people across the globe. But young people in other countries experienced it differently. Some even celebrated it.

So building a marketing campaign on USA characteristics will not be effective in other nations.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Psychographic Segments Differ

People’s attitudes, morals, values, concerns, and expectations vary by nations. They result from each nation’s culture, history, experiences, and social expectations. Different nations vary by what they teach in their schools, what they expect within families, the role of established religion, and the type of government.

Every nation’s culture differs so what is valued, expected, desired, and feared vary by nation.

For example, it was once common for USA Caucasian families to teach their children that African or Black Americans were inferior and should be treated as such. Some organizations like the Klu Klux Klan even regularly practiced murdering and torturing Blacks and got away with it. And this was after World War I when the Nazis were considered abhorrent for their racial hatred.

Thus, how people think, what they consider to be right and wrong, what they fear and value differ from nation to nation.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Buying Behaviors Differ

Each nation’s economic well-being influences buying habits of its citizens.

What people choose to buy results from many factors that are tied to their national experiences and culture.

Take grocery shopping as an example. In many prosperous European nations, people still buy fresh groceries from local markets and purchase every day for that day’s meals.

Here in the USA, we don’t want to spend that much time buying groceries. We buy fast food on the way to and from work, or we buy food that has to be processed to last weekly or monthly.

Surely, people in lots of other nations consider our food buying habits foolish.

If we are so different in the way we purchase survival products like food, how much more different are we when it comes to buying other products.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Conclusion

Developing a marketing campaign for the people in one nation and trying to transfer that campaign to another nation doesn’t work.

To effectively market internationally, unique marketing campaigns must be developed for each nation. But first marketers and business owners must learn about the people in the targeted nation.

Unfortunately, there is little systematic research being accumulated and shared with business owners about people in other nations. As the world gets smaller and the Internet gets larger, that has to change. We must do a better job of global and domestic marketing.